LTBS1

Less Than Butterflies, No. 6

1: love conceived by Plato as ascending from passion for the individual to contemplation of the universal and ideal

2: a close relationship between two persons in which sexual desire is nonexistent or has been suppressed or sublimated

Of all the stereotypes that exist and are for the most part unfounded and untrue about the culture of gay men, there is one that has stood the test of time because of its extreme accuracy. That is that amongst gay men, platonic love is nearly nonexistent. Maybe it has something to do with the hormones of a person who is biologically male, or maybe it’s just simply due to the fact that sex has never been more accessible than it is today. After all, people—whether gay, straight, bisexual, asexual, or otherwise—are complicated machines. To presumptuously agree that all gay men have had sex with most of their gay male friends would be to generalize, and therefore further perpetuate the stereotype. Still, it’s kind of true. Furthermore, Plato’s actual theory of Platonism delves much deeper into philosophy than just human emotion—extending into ideas, numerical values, and much more. With that in mind, it only makes sense that even one facet of his theory—that which regards love and lust—would be difficult to reason.

But it is that complication—and that of all great philosophers and their ideas—that makes life interesting. It’s the whys and the hows and—more often than not—the what-the-fucks. It’s these little idiosyncrasies that keep us, as humans, on our toes and allow us to experience emotion, whether that be love, hate, elation, and often just downright anxiety.

Still, as much as I hate to say it and to therefore presume a generalization, there’s little deniability regarding the fact that gay men don’t often have meaningful—or even unmeaningful—relationships that don’t, at some point, involve sex. I say ‘little,’ of course, because a gay man will often meet another gay man that they are in no way sexually attracted to and for whom they retain no romantic feelings. And every now and then, once in a blue moon—if the men in question have not written off one another due to the aforementioned fact—those two gay men will begin to converse and find that they do have ideas and ambitions and personality traits in common that will bring them together again. They may be forced to do this by work, or brought together by a mutual friend. But if that seemingly mythical rarity holds true, the two might go for coffee at Siphon or a $10 bottle of wine at Barnaby’s. And there, they might spark a kinship and see one another again, and then again after that. All the while, and as sparsely as the occasion may arise, those two gay men might become friends and maintain that Platonism throughout their friendship over a long period of time.

I have had this experience once or twice, but most significantly with my best friend, Stephen. I call Stephen my best friend, not entirely sure whether or not he realizes we kind of are best friends at this point. Although, even the story of our friendship rests just on the border of this theory as a whole, considering that when Stephen and I met, I was attracted to him. He was cute and smart and hardworking, a chairman for Pride Houston. For a while, Alice and I even exclusively referred to him as ‘Hot Stephen.’ My affinity for him, after meeting him all of two times, led me to join the nonprofit as a chairman, as well. Although, it was our time there together that quashed that affection for him. He never became less attractive or any dumber—quite the contrary, he actually only got better looking and his intelligence revealed itself more as we spent time together.

Yet somehow, my romantic interest in Stephen extinguished naturally (and quite quickly at that), and the two of us grew close as friends over the course of nearly two years. And after a while, I had settled into the resolve that Stephen had become my best friend—my best friend for whose boyfriend I also came to care dearly; my best friend I shared secrets with that I was often scared to admit to myself; my best friend with whom I discussed our sex lives and our families; my best friend who became a part of not just my personal life, but my work life, as well.

Stephen was my best friend—or at least, my best gay male friend—regardless of whether or not I was his. And just as quickly as I’d romanticized him after only meeting those fateful two times, any feelings of sexual ardor I ever had for him—no matter how short a time they may have existed—evaporated from me.

That is until the day that Stephen had to go and fuck that up for the both of us.

I was making the short trip down to Galveston to meet with some advertisers for the magazine and to have a Sunday Funday, as we gays love to do. With me was an entourage of friends, which included, but was not limited to, Ezra, Alice, my friend Derek and his partner (also named Derrick), and a few others. The day had not gone by without event, nor without sobriety after a fair share of drinks for all of us. What started out as a handful of quick meetings at the gay bar Rumors on the Seawall turned into several handfuls of alcohol, another meeting at Lafitte’s, margaritas at Salsas, more meetings and drinks back at Rumors, and one final meeting (and more drinks) at 23rd Street Station.

Yes, we’d hit all the gay bars, attended about eight meetings with drag show directors, bar owners, Pride celebration leadership, Galveston socialites, and many others like them. And due to the fact that I’d popped a few prescription pills that morning, had a handful of tequila shots, drank my weight in vodka, and paid for virtually none of it, I was drunk before we’d even made it to our second location.

My buzz had lightened some by the time we’d made our way to 23rd, but the last two meetings proved difficult for me to get through, as retention and communication were not two of my strong suits at that particular moment in time. Still, I flew through them just before 9 PM, and checked my phone to see when we’d need to start heading back to Houston.

Upon doing so, I discovered the inevitable text from Stephen, who had also gone out that night back in Houston. Originally planning to come with us for Sunday Funday with his boyfriend, Leo, Stephen had at the last minute decided he’d stay in Houston to do some work, as he was doing his best not to drink for a full month. The text, however, was a clear indicator to me that he’d slipped through the cracks of his four week plan and had been drinking. That’s sort of the beauty of having a platonic friend, you’re so undistracted by lust and desire that you pay more attention to their mannerisms and personality quirks.

And I knew that if Stephen was asking my location, it meant he either was or needed to be drinking.

No sooner than I’d hit the ‘SEND’ button on the text, Stephen was calling to drunkenly lament about a fight he’d had with one of his few other platonic, gay friends. It was a nasty debacle, one that I knew—even in my own drunkenness and without hyperbole—could be potentially damaging to their friendship.

“I just feel like I really need to be around my real friends right now, and around people who don’t treat me this way and that care about me and appreciate me and that I care about and appreciate.” Stephen was the king of run-on sentences when he was drunk. Meanwhile, I’d stepped up to a urinal to pee while he went on about the situation.

“No! No, don’t let me take you away from your day in Galveston. Stay there. I’ll be fine.”

“No, it’s okay. I just got out of my last meeting. We were about to leave anyway.”

That part was no lie. We’d been drinking since noon, and everyone had all but hit their walls. I, on the other hand, didn’t mind going to Stephen, due simply to my own social anxiety that was nearly symptomatic of being around so many people for such a long period of time. It would be a nice change of pace and a good way to decompress before going home—or so I thought.

I rounded the herds and we left the island. I explained to Ezra, Alice, and Jared (another friend who’d come along with us, and the magazine’s photographer) the situation and the urgency to return home. So, we made our way back to the city hastily, and I returned Jared and Ezra to their cars before Alice and I made our way to Rich’s.

Upon entering, I was faced with the reminder that Bunnies on the Bayou was having their annual Snow Bunnies event that night, which led to me having to pay a cover charge despite the fact that it was only just 9 o’clock on a Sunday. “Fuckers,” I mumbled under my breath as I handed over $10 for both Alice and I to the Bunny who also happened to be my former co-chair at Pride. I wasn’t his biggest fan.

We found Stephen on the patio. I approached him from behind and grabbed him by both sides of his waist, which resulted in him jumping off the ground and nearly knocking over another person’s drink.

“So, I see that your month without alcohol has come to a crashing halt,” I teased.

“Girl, you started this. You gave me Prosecco yesterday.” That much was true. But it was less than a full glass and it was lunchtime, after all.

“Thank you for coming,” he told me with eyes that were not only glassy from being drunk, but red and puffy from having, at the very least, fought back tears. Stephen ordered the two of us a drink, and Alice sat tiredly on a bench against the back wall while he went back into his spiel about the argument between he and his friend. I could see almost the entire thing playing out in my head. His friend, Mike, had probably been taken aback as a drunk, hurt Stephen launched into a diatribe about how Mike had been a shitty friend. Sad as it may be, the argument was almost the perfect centerpiece to any night out amongst the gays.

All I did was listen to Stephen. It didn’t feel like he really wanted my advice; and in being friends for the short time we had been, I’d learned when he was looking for advice and when he wasn’t. This was one of those opportunities I was meant to learn from in the art of listening and empathy—not two of my strong suits. Once he’d calmed down some, Stephen and I discussed Pride and our lives and things that let his mind wander away from the showdown with Mike. Truthfully, Stephen probably wasn’t much drunker than I was. In fact, I’d seen him far more drunk at many times during our friendship. Something about him, however, was different than anything I’d ever seen in Stephen before.

Certainly, I’d seen Stephen disappointed and angry and upset. But as I watched him talk and tried my best to keep up, I could sense something about him to which I hadn’t before bore witness.

He was wounded. There he was, after two weeks of not drinking (and that’s just wine; he hadn’t had liquor in nearly three months), alone in a busy club where he’d just taken an emblematic blow to the head and to the heart. The only friend he’d come there with had abandoned him for the very people they’d been fighting about in the first place, and he had no one else.

I was glad to be there for him. I was glad to be his friend when there weren’t any others within reach—or maybe even when there weren’t any others willing to extend their capacities to his emotional needs. Stephen was not a reactionary, nor was he terribly emotional. He was one of those grown-up, gay men who dealt with his issues by taking a reasonable, pragmatic approach to them. This Stephen—the one who had obviously cried a bit and had been left to feel the humiliation and exile of feeling as though no one wants you around—was new to me. And though I wasn’t glad to see him melancholy, I did accept and appreciate the fact that I was the friend he’d called to his side.

Soon enough, Leo arrived, and Alice and I prepared to leave the couple at Rich’s to enjoy themselves. As we parted ways, Stephen leaned in to hug me, planting a soft and sisterly kiss on the cheek, then turned to Alice, who—devoid of all social skills—awkwardly offered her hand to him for a nice, sturdy shake. I then hugged Leo, after which Stephen intercepted yet another hug from me.

Only this time, as I pulled away at the close, Stephen clasped his hands around my what-should-be biceps, and firmly gripped me in a momentary pause. The world seemed to slow down then, and I found a genuine confusion invading my mind as to what he was doing. Although, before I could generate any logic or reason, Stephen leaned forward and kissed me right on the mouth, right in front of God, Alice, his boyfriend, and half the Houston gay community standing around.

And for a moment, there was a flutter inside my chest. It was the kind that comes when those butterflies inside of you take flight, and their wings tickle your insides as they bounce from wall-to-wall looking for a way out. It was exactly as I’d have imagined it to be back when I was interested in Stephen. Scruffy from his beard. Soft from his lips. And somehow tranquil, in spite of the anxiety that was building at a lightning-quick speed inside of me. I mean, this was Stephen, my now-best friend, but someone we’d also formerly and affectionately referred to as Hot Stephen when Alice and I first met him. But there was another part of me that was much louder and much less unprecedented. It was a voice in my head and my heart that screamed, “No! We’re sisters! Sisters don’t do this! Sis, stop! Sis! Sissy!”

Then, although it seemed to last a lifetime, it was over. Stephen relinquished me and without another word, Alice and I silently trudged back through Rich’s toward the door, my freshly-kissed mouth agape the entire time. Both Alice and I decided against speaking of it on the ride home, but we both knew what had just happened.

Anthony Ramirez had been kissed on the mouth by Hot Stephen. If you’d told him this about two years prior, he would have called you a liar, but also jumped for joy. Now? Not so much.

But Anthony Ramirez—me, that is—wasn’t jumping for joy. Instead, I just stood around confused as to why that had happened. Sure, I could chalk it up to the fact that Stephen was very, very drunk. But it didn’t account for all the times I’d seen him much drunker and how he’d not ever put his lips on me then. I could also argue that we’d just shared an intimate moment where Stephen was feeling a great deal of pain, and I was the only person who’d arrived to help—making it not a kiss of romance, but one of gratitude and kinship. It was the type of kiss Thelma and Louise shared before they took their fateful dive off the cliff at the end of the film. And truthfully, wasn’t that what we were? Thelma and Louise? Ride-or-dies? Laverne and Shirley? Tia and Tamera?

And maybe that’s all that it was. After all, the American culture is one of the very few that equates all lip-to-lip kissing to a signifier of romance. Around the world, a kiss is nothing more than a symbol of many kinds of affection. Certainly it was nothing more than a one-off thing executed only after the culmination of many drinks and many more feelings of sorrow and closeness.

Still, it begged the question in my mind for days after: was that all it was?

I mean, while very different people, there were many medians in which Stephen and I met due to similar interests, likes, dislikes, and opinions. We were both educated gay men who were informed and cultured and enjoyed the arts and talking about sex and boys and drinking wine at virtually no cost to either of us. Was it possible that if Stephen and I had met at another time in our lives—had he not been involved and had I been a couple of years older—that the Platonism Plato so convolutedly posited may not have existed?

To be clear, I knew then and know now that Stephen isn’t attracted to me. But at the height of emotions, whether it be sadness or gratitude or lust or fear or joy, our perceptions as humans tend to change. And, as discussed before, humans are not simple creatures. We’re ruled by those emotions—even the most unemotional of us, like Stephen. Could it be that under different circumstances, though circumstances that would have still started our relationship as just friends, our friendship might have forged another path on the road?

Possibly, though not probably. Our entire lives would have required revision, from time of birth to college applications to the cars we drove to how much we drank on any particular Sunday night.

One thing is for certain, though Stephen and I haven’t discussed this since it occurred, as he probably doesn’t remember doing it:

I got closer to my friend that night. Nothing came of that silly kiss, as I knew it wouldn’t because neither of us wanted anything more from one another than a friend who could be at Rich’s when the other heartbroken and drunk by 9 PM to tell you they love you and that you’re worth more. And that’s the beauty of what Stephen and I continue to have.

Even in the moments of gentle brushes of hands against thighs, or of fingers locking together in a moment of intensity, or even those times rarer still than platonic love between gay men when you kiss on the mouth, true friendship supersedes and remains palpable and pure and true. Even when the Platonism is called into question and Plato momentarily begins to turn over in his grave, the reality sets back in and you remember exactly what your place is in that person’s life, and theirs in yours … even if you find yourself questioning it from time-to-time.

But that’s the beauty of real platonic loves. They’re insightful, and introspective, and rare like fossils. And just like fossils, just like Thelma and Louise, just like Plato, those loves teach us things we absolutely have to learn.

And if we’re lucky enough to have even one of those sorts of relationships in our entire lives, that’s magic.

Less Than Butterflies, No. 5

It was one of those fairy tale moments; a guy I’d been swooning over for a year or so and I had asked me for a date once he returned home from the holidays abroad. In my fairy tale, I was the princess (or maybe just the gay prince) who met another gay prince at the ball, fell for him, and was asked to dance with him before his entire court and all of his constituents. They watched in awe, knowing how wonderful a couple the two princes were, happy to see their separate kingdoms (his Cypress and mind Washington Heights) may someday become one. Only, in my fairy tale, I was also sleeping with another prince who hailed from the Kingdom of the Woodlands, but we weren’t exclusive, so it didn’t make me slutty.

But just like in every fairy tale, there arose a slight … complication.

Let us say that one of my many loyal subjects—in this case, my ex-boyfriend, Kevin—ran into me (still a prince in this scenario) at a local peasant pub, where I’d gone incognito to enjoy a drink with my lessers. There, Kevin stated he’d heard of my impending courtship and was happy I’d found someone new. He had but one question:

“What are y’all going to do about the sex?”

“Huh?” I asked Kevin, my kingdom suddenly under attack.

“Well … you’re both tops,” he explained, as though this were off-hand information I should have known. And just like that, my fairy tale was over. The dragon couldn’t be slayed. The land had been plagued by famine and locusts. Evil had triumphed over good; and, apparently, evil was a top.

Just like any athlete preparing for a big game, it felt necessary that I practice bottoming before the big night with Tyler, the aforementioned prince, which was still a week out. I figured that seven days was plenty of time to prepare myself not only physically, but also mentally for the pounding I was about to take.

I hadn’t the slightest idea as to what I was looking for when I entered the sex shop and was greeted by a wall of cocks in a variety of colors, sizes, shapes, and girths. The saleswoman was helpful, if not a bit intrusive, about what I was looking for and what I was hoping to do. I let her know immediately that I wasn’t there shopping for a new Bible. She responded to my cattiness the way most straight women react to gay men—with amory.

Soon, we’d settled on the Billy P-spot vibrator by Lelo, as it came in a lovely Bordeaux color in which I briefly considered painting an accent wall in my kitchen. I soon decided against it, unsure of how I’d sneak my new vibrator into Lowe’s to compare the color to paint swatches.

Next came the more technical and often confusing side of the shopping: lube, toy cleaning products, a little weed, and—for better or for worse—an enema. I knew before I’d even locked myself in my bedroom that this process was going to take time. I canceled plans; I poured myself a glass of wine; I lit enough candles to warm the inside of a frozen Hot Pocket; I put my phone on airplane mode; I smoked a cigarette to calm my nerves, and then a bowl to actually calm my nerves. I was absolutely certain that I could not screw this up, but was almost just as certain that I was going to end up doing so anyway.

You have to keep in mind that my entire adult, gay life, I’ve only ever topped. Maybe it would have happened differently if I’d ever been in a situation where I wasn’t the only top. But in the years I’d been slutting it up from The Woodlands down to Galveston (not to mention a few times in DC, Indianpolis, Denver, San Diego, Orlando, and a few other major metropolitan areas), I’d always had the good fortune of falling into bed with bottoms. This was a new experience to me, yet not one to which I was vehemently opposed. In fact, I’d always told myself that I would someday do it if I were to fall for a guy that I liked enough to try.

But that was just the thing: it had to be the right guy. And in spite of how I’d opined over Prince Tyler for so very long, I wasn’t certain that he was anything more than just a frog in this fucked up fairy tale. Although, it was lucky that I now had Billy the Vibrating Wonder to use as a magic wand to find out.

So, stoned out of my mind, I laid down in bed after cleaning things out … you know … downtown. I sipped my wine through a straw, pulled off my clothing, and began to lube up.

There’s something bottoms don’t tell you about lube … it’s fucking messy. I briefly considered watching porn during this journey into my entertainment center, but it only took a few seconds before the lube was already getting everywhere, and I decided a laptop may not be the best thing to have nearby while that was the case. Instead, I let my mind wander, turning on the vibrator to its lowest setting and pressing it against my body. Obviously I didn’t go straight for home base. I worked my way around, actually enjoying the vibration against my neck, my chest, my penis, and my perineum (that’s science for “taint”).

And the truth of the matter was that I was really turned on. I mean, if my penis were a teapot, it would’ve been whistling like a lesbian gym teacher during volleyball season. And after a while—and I do mean a while, as I was still pretty freaked out at this point—I began inserting Billy into my end zone.

But it didn’t take long for me to realize that I was in way over my head … or at least … my legs were.

“It was awful,” I said after gulping down a glass of cabernet.

I was joined at Barnaby’s on Fairview by my friends Elaine (straight, married, ginger), Jackie (straight, married, not a ginger), and (oddly enough) Ezra.

“It’s not for everyone,” Ezra told me, a sore reminder that if he could have just fallen in love with me when he had the chance, I could have bypassed this entire situation for the rest of my life.

“I’ve always wondered, how do two men decide how this is going to go?” Jackie asked. “Do you have a discussion before hand? Is there like a sign?”

“A lot of times,” Ezra answered before I could, “when people meet on apps, it’s in their biography. Top, bottom, versatile. Or, yeah, there’s a discussion.”

“But if there’s not?” Jackie asked.

I looked around, trying to keep my volume down as not to disturb everyone that still had an appetite inside the restaurant. “It’s kind of like when you and I go to Olive Garden,” I told her. “You know, because we’re human garbage. But what happens when the waiter puts the breadsticks on the table? We shove them into our gaping mouths. And why? Because we’re—”

“Fat,” Jackie interrupted.

“Okay, well, I was going to say hungry, but that’s fair.”

“So … what you’re saying,” Elaine picked up, “is that there’s …”

“A hungry butthole,” I said. “It’s okay to say it. There are signs. They’re not the signs of real hunger, like your stomach growling or light headedness. They’re signs like a guy wrapping his legs around you when you get into bed to have sex. Or sometimes something a bit like …” I struggled with my verbiage, “… presenting.”

“As in a guy just flashes his anus to another guy like a mating chimp?” Elaine asked.

“As in his body language isn’t as phallocentric as a top’s might be. He dances and shows off his ass. He moves your hands down there when you have your arms around him. He sits on your lap. Those sorts of things.”

“I don’t know that there’s any fact in what you’re saying,” Ezra laughed.

“There is. It’s not like there’s a study on this somewhere. It’s just observation. You wouldn’t know because … well … you’re a bottom.”

“I’m glad you bring this up,” Elaine chimed in. “Because there are times when my husband gets a little fiesty and thinks that we’re going to go down there for that particular activity. And I’m not about it. For women, there isn’t any pleasure. We don’t have a prostate to stimulate. It’s just a lot of soreness and feeling like you’re shitting yourself the entire time.”

Everyone laughed as the other patrons of the restaurant darted glares at us.

I poured more wine. “The soreness is the worst. You’re lucky I could even come here tonight. I feel like a Mormon after a very long bike ride.”

“Listen, there’s not much I say no to in bed,” Elaine went on. “But I told Charlie,” (Elaine’s husband), “that it’s not that I don’t love him. But he’s very well endowed; and if he wants to do anal more often, he’s going to have to let me shove something up his ass and see how he likes it.”

“He might just,” Ezra pointed out.

“Yeah, straight people are apparently doing that now,” I said. “Pegging, they call it. All our lives straight people have wanted to point out all the things that are wrong with being gay, and yet they want us to decorate their houses like ours, and be their best friends like we are with each other, and help them pick out clothes like we do. And now they’re wanting to have sex like we do!” I knocked back the rest of my wine. “It’s appropriation, and it’s insulting.”

A few nights later, once my not-so-hungry butthole had stopped aching, I received a text message from the other man I was sleeping with on the regular—the Prince of The Woodlands and, in spite of the fact that our relationship was mostly sexual and not exclusive, the man I had saved in my phone as this while drunk one night:

Most of our conversations started out that way. We’d hooked up a few weeks ago after chatting on Grindr, and he had turned out to be one of the sweetest and hottest guys I’d ever had sex with in my life. A part of me sort of felt I might be catching feelings, but I tried to scrub these away as often as I could. His name I hadn’t learned until well after our first sexual encounter, but turned out to be Dylan.

I grabbed a bottle of wine from Spec’s and headed from my house to the Woodlands—no short drive when you live in Downtown Houston. Still, I was horny and Dylan was hotter than a ghost pepper in the heat of a Texas July. I was still struggling with this aspect of our sexual relationship. Dylan was certainly way out of my league and I struggled to meander my mind away from my own self-deprecation to just appreciate his hotness when we were fucking around. Still, he kept coming back.

While having sex that night, I noticed that something was different about Dylan. He was not presenting as he had the last few times we’d hooked up. In fact, Dylan had taken on a much stronger dominance in the bedroom than he ever had before. Every time I reached my hand down for his ass, he’d push me down on my back and crawl on top of me to kiss me.

The sex was incredible, don’t get me wrong. In fact, his newfound assertive attitude was a great turn-on; and somewhere there in throes of passion, I found Dylan spreading my legs apart and crawling between them.

A part of me panicked, as I knew exactly was about to happen. Dylan was going to try to stick his dick inside of me and I was going to have to be that person who shut down a good thing because it took a turn I wasn’t there for. After all, Dylan’s penis was huge for a white dude four inches shorter than me, and I certainly didn’t want something even larger than Billy the Vibrating Nightmare inside of me after the other night.

But Dylan did something I wasn’t expecting, in spite of its commonplace nature for him. He took his hands and placed them on mine, palm-to-palm and fingers intertwined. Then he kissed me, and he whispered to me, and he nibbled on my neck and traced lines up and down my body with his tongue. And all the while that he performed these magical sex acts, my legs crawled and curled around his body like ivy up a trellis.

I was in an unexpected euphoria and an unwavering state of ecstasy. I was sweaty and writhing and my hair was likely knotted in the back from moving around so much on my back like an upside-down crab. But suddenly I found my legs not only wrapping around Dylan, but pulling him in closer to me, pushing his pelvis into me and wanting him more and more. It was in that moment that I realized it was me! I was the one who had the hungry butthole! I was suddenly back to my fairy tale in which my sage keepers—fairies or dwarves normally, but in this case, Billy the Vibrator—found me at my journey’s end to tell me that what I’d been looking for was inside of me all along.

Or at least … now it was.

The orgasm was insane. It was not like any other I’d had before. I screamed at one point, which is dangerous when you’re fucking against a wall against which neighbors sleep on the other side. I was clutching at Dylan’s skin like a cliff I had to take hold of as not to fall to my death. But when it was over, I didn’t hang around to chat like I normally would have. I didn’t drink any more wine and I barely kissed Dylan goodbye. I bolted. Right out the door, right down the stairs, right into my car, and right to the bar.

At some point when the endorphins had subsided, it had occurred to me as I lay there, soaked in sweat and semen, that my rule had always been that I would bottom if I ever met a guy that I liked enough to go through with it for.

And as I arrived at the bar, taking a shot and downing a drink, I couldn’t help but ask myself the same question over-and-over again: Was Dylan the right guy? Or, conversely, was it possible that every now and then, under the right circumstances and with a man who knows exactly what he’s doing, every gay man is capable of possessing a hungry butthole?

Less Than Butterflies, No. 4

I’d only ever had an experience with one guy from Grindr before in my life, and it had been enough at the time to steer me clear of hookup apps for a while. It’s a story for another day, but as previously mentioned, it involved a man urinating on me as I was knelt down in the shower to blow him. Still, being that my sex drive had hit its peak and that over a year had passed since that nauseating experience, I was inclined to download Grindr and Scruff in the hopes of finding someone willing to have sex with me immediately.

One night, as I was sitting in my office writing, my phone buzzed beside me. I peered up at the clock in the upper-right-hand corner of my laptop and realized it was nearly a quarter past three. As many normally-drunk friends as I had, I couldn’t imagine a single one of them texting me after two, unless it was from the side of the road as they prepared to be incarcerated. But as I slid my home screen away on my phone, I realized that it was no one I knew at all. In fact, it wasn’t a text message at all.

It was a Grindr notification I’d missed nearly an hour before.

Where a profile picture should have been for this man was only the shadowy avatar that comes by default with a profile to which one hasn’t attached a photo. Moreover, where there should have been some sort of headline or name, there was nothing. All that stood beside the avatar was a bright green dot indicating he was online and the words 1 mile away.

Assuming it was more than likely some creepy dude I had no interest in wasting my time with, I decided to be a bit more petty.

For a creep, he wasn’t coming off terribly … well … creepy. I mean, sure, he had initiated the conversation by offering me a blowjob, but it was a Grindr message, after all. What else was I expecting? An invitation to a romantic evening at the symphony?

As the banter played out a bit more without so much sexual connotation, I found myself oddly aroused. I’d gotten messages on Grindr the last few days that always ended up being an offer to either pound me, a request to be pounded, or an unsolicited dick pic. This man, however, was actually quite clever—a quality I assert to be very important in the men I engage with romantically, though not necessarily for those I engage with strictly sexually.

When the picture arrived next, I was shocked, to say the least. His face felt very familiar to me. Not the sort of familiar that surprises you when you recognize your eighth grade math teacher in line at the grocery store, but can’t place her name. It wasn’t even the kind of familiar you experience seeing the stranger you’d smiled at as you’d pumped gas into your car groggily before work one morning suddenly walked past you a second time. It was as if I’d seen him more than once and actually acknowledged him.

Aside from that, he was quite attractive. He bore olive skin and a some slight, messy facial hair. His eyes looked sleepy from having just woken up. His eyes were the color of a dark, natural honey and lips were plump and pink with a sheepish smile.

I’ve always had a massive complex about my weight and size. I’m not like morbidly obese or anything like that. In fact, I must not be terrible to look at considering how much dick I was catching before I’d sworn off sex for three straight months in the name Never-Will-Love-Me-Ezra. But the photo on my profile had been taken by my friend, Iris, when she was visiting for the party and made me look at bit thinner than I ever perceived myself to be. So, I sent him another photo someone had taken of me as I’d been hosting the Volunteer Open House for Pride Houston the same weekend my profile photo had been taken.

Only, I realized quite quickly that I looked rather slender in that photo, as well. Maybe I’d lost a little weight without realizing. I certainly hadn’t been eating much as my workload consistently increased.

I eventually gave him my number and told him to text me while I thought about it. Only … I didn’t have to think about it long. I wasn’t as coy as I’d been pretending to be with this man. I’d been in need of sex for far too long. I certainly wasn’t going to let the fact that my hair was up, or that I had eaten pork earlier that day, or that I was wearing a pair of volleyball shorts that read eat me across the ass stop me from getting laid. In fact, the latter of those had actually been for the purposes of doing so.

So I dashed to my bathroom, brushed my teeth, pulled my hair down, ran a brush through my short, chocolate-colored locks, and applied a new coat of deodorant. When I’d finished, I slid the shorts off of me, then took off my underwear and threw them into my messenger bag.

It’d been three months. And as I stared at those underwear in my bag, all I saw were another few seconds longer I’d have to wait to be touched by a man.

If it was possible, I’d say he was even better looking in person than he had been in his photo. In fact, he sort of bore a slight resemblance to Jeremy Piven … minus the sexual assault.

Forgetting to first exchange names, he showed me around his apartment, talking to me in a smooth, yet masculine voice. He became apologetic about the fact that his living room was a bit of a mess and about how he’d left a pile of laundry in the corner of his bedroom. I wasn’t seeing any of that, though. All I could focus on was just how fucking beautiful this man was. And as he led me to the bed and took my hands into his own, he suddenly didn’t feel like some stranger from Grindr. When he placed his hands on my waist to pull my shorts down, it didn’t seem at all like we’d just met.

And soon enough, he was completely nude, illuminated only by the light coming from his half-shut closet. He was what other gays would call an otter. Chiseled frame. A little hair on his chest and stomach. Manly.

Staring at him took my breath away, a bit … and not in a good way. It suddenly became very plain to me that this man—though polite and funny and ever-so-willing to sleep with me—was vastly out of my league. To be honest, if I were him and he were me, I wouldn’t have even given myself a second look. Yet there he was beside me on the bed, kissing me like his high school sweetheart and wrapping his legs up inside of mine.

And as the foreplay grew more intense, so did my anxiety. I couldn’t help it. I was sure I was only minutes away from breaking into hives or losing the ability to breathe. Still, my anxiety didn’t manifest in those typical ways that it did when I hadn’t met a deadline or when I had spent too much time at my mother’s house. No, rather than falling verklempt or beginning to shake uncontrollably, my body took on my nervousness and insecurities in a brand new way.

By keeping me from getting an erection.

For nearly half an hour, I did everything I could to distract him from the fact that I wasn’t getting hard. Don’t get me wrong, I was very turned on. It’s just that I didn’t appear to be aroused. I started by sucking him off, which proved difficult because he had to have had the largest dick I’d ever seen in person. Still, he must not have sensed the fact that I was about to choke to death the entire time, as he kept telling me I could teach lessons on how to give a blowjob because I was so good at it.

Oh, how proud my mother would be.

When he was getting a little too close to climax, he rolled over on his back, ass-up, and asked me to fuck him.

The problem was that I still couldn’t. I’d been going down on him for the better part of ten minutes and all I’d managed to erect was a list of ways to distract him from the fact that I couldn’t get it up. It took everything in me not to take my dick to the side for a last minute pep talk. So, instead, I did something I know I’m very good at, but that I only do to men I’ve slept, to whose hygiene I can attest.

The rimming process probably didn’t last as long as the blowjob, but he certainly was more vocal about it than he was about the latter. I was doing everything that I could to run my flag up its pole, but nothing was doing the trick.

A moment later, when I’d pulled my tongue out of his asshole, he rolled over and asked me if I’d rather him be on his knees on his back. I didn’t even give him enough time to answer before I laid down next to him and pulled him in to make out with him some more. As we kissed more, he reached for both my hands and took them into his own. It wasn’t something I’d experienced often when hooking up with strangers—the hand-holding, even the kissing—but I took it in, basked in it, even. There was something romantic about it, something that made this feel like we weren’t going to just be fucking one out and high-fiving when it was over. Contrary, and though I’m not sure I can explain why, it felt more like I was making love to someone I’d known and loved for years and years.

Still, I couldn’t bring my penis to cooperate. It was almost as though it was down there napping after a long shift at work, when in fact the motherfucker had been laid off for the last three months. Anxiety and self-consciousness or not, there was no reason I shouldn’t be able to perform this simple task—one men have been doing without effort since the dawn of time.

He was absolutely perfect. To say that he was the man of my dreams might be too literal, as he felt familiar to me in a way I could only recall as if I’d created him myself. Everything about him was perfect. His ass. His face. His slight facial hair. The way he held my left hand with his right. And as he kissed me, I ran my hands down his well-muscled arms, which had just reached down to find my penis … flaccid.

He did his best to make it work, but nothing came of it. He grazed his ass against my pubis, rubbed his pelvis against mine as we kissed. He kissed me from head-to-toe, then back again.

Finally, feeling so humiliated that I couldn’t stand it anymore, I began to sit up.

“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I’m sure you’ve heard this one before, but I really do mean it: this has never happened to me before. And it really isn’t you. It’s me.”

“It’s okay,” he said as soft as the lighting the haloed the room.

“No, it’s not okay,” I told him. “You are … very attractive. In fact, you are the most attractive man I’ve ever been in bed with. Like … if I were to show my friends a photo of you and told them that you actually wanted to have sex with me, they’d call me a liar and slap me in the mouth.”

But the man whose name I still did not know didn’t laugh at my little remark, nor did he break from that bedeviling look on his face. Instead, he said, “Hey,” and again, “hey,” while his left arm snaked around me and the knuckles of his right hand nearly levitated from my thigh up to my chin. He pushed my face up to look into his eyes and said, “It’s okay,” before he kissed me. “You don’t need to apologize.”

His hand trailed back down my shirt—which due to self-consciousness I’d never taken off—and fell lightly into the space between my thighs.

As cliché as it sounds, I shuddered and let out a gasp. His fingers swam in place between my legs as he kissed me more, both our lips moving gradually from softness to heat and fury on both our parts until I felt something down below become participatory.

“Hey,” I panted out as he moved his lips from mine and to my neck. “It’s uh … it’s um …” I could barely catch my breath. “It’s working.”

The rest was easy. He’d never lost his erection; and from there we quickly went back to what we’d started, and—so caught up in the growing heat—ended almost just as quickly at the exact same time (another one of those things that’s never happened for me during a hookup).

When he came, his ejaculate shot so far that one might have believed he’d been packing a paintball gun down there. I’d later tell Hayden this and show him the spot on the collar of my black shirt where his cum had landed in the shape of a lipstick mark left on someone’s cheek. To this Hayden would say, “Omigod, it looks like his dick reached up and kissed you.”

And though my insecurities had mostly evaporated, my natural instinct after we’d finished was to bolt. Throughout my late teens and early twenties, I’d never slept with a man I wasn’t dating that wanted to cuddle or be intimate afterward. In fact, even the men I had dated didn’t want that. But as I was rolling away to collect my shorts and shoes and glasses, that arm that had remained wrapped around me through the entire second half of our performance strong-armed me back in and laid my head on his shoulder. And from there, he intertwined his legs with mine, kissed me more, and found my hand to nestle his fingers into the spaces between mine.

Then, just like that, all of the insecurity really was gone. I was lying there with a complete stranger I felt like I’d known my entire life. And despite the … um … hiccups in the beginning, it was still some of the very best sex I’d ever had in my life.

“I really am sorry about before,” I felt the need to say again.

He squeezed my hand. “Don’t be,” he told me, now playing with my fingers. “I mean, clearly everything worked out.”

He had a point. We didn’t embrace too much longer. He had to get ready for work and I needed to get back there myself. Still, as insane as it sounds, lying there, even through all the messiness at the very beginning, I was beginning to feel something flutter inside of me I’d not felt in a long while.

Butterflies.

At that point, it wasn’t even about the fact that his body appeared to be molded out of clay fresh from the kiln. He could have been the world’s ugliest man, and to have been so kind to me in a moment of extreme weakness, so tender and caring and without applying pressure, I happily would have stayed with him until he finally tired of me.

But maybe that was just me. I mean, sure, it was all more intimate than any other hook-up I’d ever had. Still, could it just have been me romanticizing something that would be over and never spoken of again?

I didn’t believe it then.

I don’t now.

But it didn’t change the fact that I was still in the process of getting over one boy. I wasn’t going to allow myself to fall too quickly into another messy situation with another—even if this one might actually like me for something more than sex. So, I sat up and he did the same to kiss me goodbye. Then I made my way to the door to exit quietly. Although, I was on such a high of natural ecstasy and was so enamored by his kindness that I got all the way out the door before I realized I’d left both my shoes and my cell phone.

So much for going quietly.

Later, I texted him again to apologize another time. I’m not sure why I kept apologizing, but I didn’t want that to be a lasting impression of me that he had.

It was only then that I realized that I’d gone through all of that and still had no idea what this man’s name was. But it didn’t matter. I knew I’d learn it someday. Because right then and there, as I laid down in bed at home and drifted off to sleep in which I’d dream about how amazing that one short hour had been, I felt something wash over me I’d never felt before in my entire life. Not with any of my exes. Not with Taylor Kyle. Not even with Ezra.

And it might sound absolutely, certifiably insane, but as that wave enveloped me, I just knew that I was going to marry that man someday.

Less Than Butterflies, No. 4

They say that it happens to every man at some point in his life — that it isn’t uncommon. Maybe you’ve just had a little bit too much to drink that night. It could be that it’s too cold and you have poor circulation as a result. It is possible that the new antidepressants you’ve been taking per your licensed primary care physician — who takes no issue in prescribing you pretty much anything of which you ask — have negatively affected your sex drive.

For me, it was none of those things. I was stone-cold, stupid sober and hadn’t had a drink since the night Ezra had all but said he could never love me (or, at least, that’s how I’d heard it). I was a bit chilly, but I’d warmed up against the body heat of the gorgeous man lying on top of me. And all the pills I was on were ones I’d been taking for years with no such result.

Yet, there I lie, naked from the waist down with this Herculean man from Grindr on top of me. He was absolutely perfect. To say that he was the man of my dreams might be too literal, as he felt familiar to me in a way I could only recall as if I’d created him myself. Everything about him was perfect. His ass. His dick. His face. His slight facial hair. The way he held my left hand with his right. And as he kissed me, I ran my hands down his well-muscled arms, which had just reached down to find my penis … flaccid.

Sure, they say it happens to everyone … but it had never happened to me. And I couldn’t help but furiously try to imagine why it would happen when I was engaged in sex with a man who was quite literally the hottest man I’d probably ever sleep with.

Well, that is, if I’d been able to get it up.

What the fuck was going on with me?

Over the last three months, I’d been in something of a dry spell. No boyfriends, no Tinder or Grindr (not that I was particularly fond of either). Nothing.

Only, it wasn’t the kind of dry spell you hear your best friend talk about when their boyfriend they’ve been with for five years, have been engaged to for three, but still aren’t married aren’t having sex. It also wasn’t the sort where a person enters their mid-forties, suddenly finding themselves repulsed by what they see in the mirror for no real reason, and gives up on love altogether.

No, no. This was a self-induced dry spell … sort of.

It had been a day like many others, with Hayden and I drinking wine on the patio of Barnaby’s well before dark like good gay men, with plans of walking to Ripcord as soon as we’d polished off another bottle. At the time, I’d still been silently obsessing over Ezra and had just begun to feel comfortable talking about my feelings for him. This, of course, was well before my drunken party in which Ezra had mentioned how disinterested in me he was (I’m paraphrasing).

It was a particularly unpleasant day, as I’d just learned that Ezra had been reading my gay sex column and now knew the ins-and-outs of every sexual experience I’d ever written about since it’s inception into the literary world. These encounters included, but were not limited to, a threesome I’d had with an artist and a drunken bear (not the animal, obviously) from Grindr, my first Grindr hookup in which the bear from the aforementioned threesome took it upon himself to pee on me while I was kneeled down to give him a blowjob, and a gay orgy I’d attended on Coyle St. that ended with me fucking a professor from the University of Houston who claimed to be there as part of an “anthropological study.”

I relayed this information to Hayden with great haste.

“Okay, so here’s what you need to do,” Hayden explained as he yanked a cigarette out of his mouth and blew smoke in my face. “You’re going to have to stop sleeping around.”

“What do you mean I have to stop sleeping around?” I asked him. “You make it sound like I’m the Gay Whore of Babylon.”

“Given the current state of the world, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were and this were some kind of Revelations-esque nightmare.”

“Great. Thanks,” I sighed. “It’s not like this is about me being slutty. I mean, true, I kind of am. But this is moreso about the fact that it’s kind of my job. I can’t just stop doing that. I need the money.”

“It’s not that I think that you’re slutty. You’re a twenty-three-year-old, for chrissakes. But I’m also one of your best friends, and I know you well enough to know that you’re just doing this sleeping around for —”

“For validation,” I interrupted him with a shrug and another bite of my burger.

Hayden sort of looked around the patio for a moment before saying, “I was going to say ‘for fun.’ But you may actually want to talk to someone about that.” He shook his head and looked up to the ceiling while he puffed his cigarette. Without looking back at me, he went on. “You don’t have to stop writing your column, obviously. That’s your job. But you do have to stop sleeping around so much.”

“Oh, this coming from the man in an open marriage whose Grindr alerts go off like a crazy coupon lady at the cash register who’s just been told she can’t double-up on Nabisco coupons.”

Hayden leered his eyes down at me. “If you don’t stop doing that and if you don’t stop binge-drinking every time you feel like you have something to celebrate, he’s never going to take you seriously or be able to look for a partner in you.”

I didn’t want to acquiesce to what I believed to be Hayden’s ridiculous demands. However, I had to admit—though I never would—that he had a point. It wasn’t all me. I’m not that slutty; and I’m not currently on Grindr; and I don’t troll the bars looking for someone to go home with. A lot more of this particular point rested with Ezra.

You see, Ezra was something of an anomaly in gay culture. While he was very much attracted to men, and while he himself admitted on more than one occasion that he didn’t mind jacking off to gay porn from time-to-time, Ezra was, more or less, asexual.

I know … gay anomaly. Though we’d discussed it more than once, I’d never felt too eager to ask him for many details regarding the situation. My understanding was that he just didn’t have the motivation to actively go out and have sex with men very often and that when he did, it often proved to be rather lackluster. And yet, like how he and I first connected, that didn’t keep him off of Tinder, nor Grindr, or other gay hook-up apps.

Not that it was my place to ever doubt him or how he felt about his sexuality, but I often pondered over whether or not this was a product of Ezra never having had really good sex. One night while at one of Stephen’s parties, my friend Courtney and her girlfriend, Jennifer, had asked me “what the deal was” with Ezra and I, to which I quickly replied that there was no such deal. I wasn’t all that comfortable talking with Courtney and Jennifer about Ezra. It wasn’t as though I believed that they’d do anything to upset him. I just felt that some things weren’t meant to be shared, even amongst friends.

Still, with my lack of responsiveness, Jennifer reeled the conversation toward Ezra’s aversion to sex, but also found it interesting that he enjoyed masturbation.

“Maybe he’s only had lazy boyfriends or bad Grindr hook-ups, but I just don’t think he’s ever had good sex,” Jennifer—a therapist—said after I, again, didn’t respond.

Although I did find it comforting to know that I wasn’t alone in this idea, I stepped away without another word, shying away from the two of them to find Stephen and Leo inside. I understood Courtney and Jennifer’s intrigue; don’t get me wrong. Still, it wasn’t my sexuality to be discussing and I didn’t feel comfortable doing it with those in which he had confided.

Nevertheless, I always knew that if anything ever became of Ezra and I, I’d have to be okay with a minimalistic sex life. Funnily enough, it didn’t take me long to accept that. In fact, Hayden’s no-sex challenge could have served as good practice for what might have someday ended up being the rest of my life.

As it turned out, the practice proved unnecessary when Ezra killed any dream of us ever being a happy, adorable, gay couple that I might have had.

Just a couple of weeks after the death of that dream, my pent-up sexual frustration was nearly pushing my hair follicles out of my skull. I’d abstained from having sex several times over the course of more than three months.